From One Night Only to The Invite, a wave of new movies are a raunchy antidote to gen Z celibacy

The first alarm bells sounded nearly 10 years ago, and since then, a deluge of books, podcasts and roundtables has tried to get at the bottom of the problem: why is gen Z not having sex?

Recently it’s as though culture has been recalibrated to make up for the youth’s apparent frigidity. “Smut” literature is on the rise, prestige TV is now depicting OnlyFans models, and indie films have taken a turn towards kink. This summer, through confused young protagonists and their sexual misadventures, the movies are zeroing in on generational attitudes about sex.

Their movie about marital bed death is this summer’s buzziest, funniest film. Its director and her co-star talk self-loathing, psychosexuality and unexpected eruptions

Earlier this week, Edward Norton took a night flight from New York to London and felt so dreadful the next day he decided to get a massage. “I hadn’t had one in such a long time,” he says, “and I almost started crying. You’re like: ‘Oh! Ah!’”

He has heard similar sounds from cinemas screening his new movie, The Invite, which is about the devastating impact of marriage on your sex life. “People are almost tearful. They’re like: ‘I haven’t had a good, adult laugh that made me feel seen in a long time.’”

Olivia Wilde directs and stars alongside Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton in bizarrely moving tale, with Rogen’s levity keeping the outrageous plot points in check

Here is a four-way sex comedy of embarrassment, as if JB Priestley had written a play about swinging. But as well as embarrassing, it is intriguing, amusing and, finally, somehow bizarrely moving.

Middle class married life is satirised in the personae of two couples having an excruciating dinner party. A failed musician and his wife, played by Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde (who also directs), extend the invitation of the title to their stylish neighbours, a therapist and ex-firefighter played by Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton. Rogen is first among equals in this cast, the ironic insider-outsider perpetually undercutting the situation’s proliferating absurdities with knowing gags or yelps of incredulous outrage, and deploying that unmistakable yuk-yuk-yuk laugh.

Sundance film festival: Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton are exceptional in a smart and funny winner about sex, marriage and partner-swapping

Not enough people managed to see last year’s self-billed “unromantic comedy” Splitsville, a shame for how tremendously entertaining it was and for what it represents at this given moment. A rigorously well-directed, genuinely funny, relatably messy look at two couples dealing with the maelstrom of non-monogamy, it was the kind of smart, well-crafted film for adults we are constantly complaining we don’t get enough of.

I had a similar thrill watching The Invite at its sold-out Sundance premiere on Saturday night. Like that film, it is also about two adult couples negotiating anxieties surrounding sex with other people – and also like that film, it’s really, consistently funny and stylishly directed, made with the kind of care and rigidity that comedies just aren’t afforded now. It doesn’t have the same absurdist slapstick streak – it’s much more of this world – but it made me feel equally energised, a reminder that maybe that mid-sized movie gap is finally being filled. I just hope more people see this one.